Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Additional fun fact for the people actually reading these descriptions:
Having "four" of anything is a bad omen in most East Asian nations, making it a bit odd to have FOUR Divine Beasts, Champions and abilities. The reason for this cultural tetraphobia is that 四 ("four") and 死 ("death") are both pronounced the same.
This superstition goes so far that it isn't unusal to have buildings without a fourth floor (the elevator goes straight from 3 to 5 without anything inbetween) or skip the number four in parking lots, restaurant tables etc. because noone wants to sit in the "place of death" anyway.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourIsDeath
This affected videogames as well. One particularily awkward example is Crash Bandicoot: originally created with 4 fingers by an American(!) company who didn't have any issues with that number, but specifically for the Japanese release, they retroactively added a finger to each of Crash's hands JUST so he doesn't have four anymore.
thegamer.com/crash-bandicoot-fingers-japan
Even in Breath of the Wild, not a single one of the sentient races has four fingers or toes.
* Hylians, Gorons, Sheikah, Yiga nd Wizzrobes have 5 fingers and toes,
* Rito have 5 "feather fingers" and 3 toes,
* Lynels have 5 fingers and no toes
* Koroks have neither fingers nor toes
* Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfoes and Hinoxes have 3 fingers and toes each.
The question is, why did Nintendo make sure to avoid the number four on even the smallest possible scale, but then having 4 Divine Beasts, 4 Champions and 4 main abilities is suddenly not an issue?
Well, that's what you'd get if you plan for five Divine Beasts and then scrap one last minute.
As for Ganon himself, he has 8k HP which get reduced by 2k for every Blight you defeated, until he has 4k left. Call it nitpicky, but that, too, would have felt a bit more "even" if he had 10k HP at the start and ended up losing exactly 1k for every defeated Blight so he had 5k in the end. He's already a super easy boss compared to the regular Blights, so giving him more HP would not have hurt.
By the way, the "Vah Manta" Divine Beast Icon is nothing official. I used parts of the other Divine Beast icons to create it so that it would (hopefully) have the same overall design as the official icons.
Additional fun fact for the people actually reading these descriptions:
Having "four" of anything is a bad omen in most East Asian nations, making it a bit odd to have FOUR Divine Beasts, Champions and abilities. The reason for this cultural tetraphobia is that 四 ("four") and 死 ("death") are both pronounced the same.
This superstition goes so far that it isn't unusal to have buildings without a fourth floor (the elevator goes straight from 3 to 5 without anything inbetween) or skip the number four in parking lots, restaurant tables etc. because noone wants to sit in the "place of death" anyway.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourIsDeath
This affected videogames as well. One particularily awkward example is Crash Bandicoot: originally created with 4 fingers by an American(!) company who didn't have any issues with that number, but specifically for the Japanese release, they retroactively added a finger to each of Crash's hands JUST so he doesn't have four anymore.
thegamer.com/crash-bandicoot-fingers-japan
Even in Breath of the Wild, not a single one of the sentient races has four fingers or toes.
* Hylians, Gorons, Sheikah, Yiga nd Wizzrobes have 5 fingers and toes,
* Rito have 5 "feather fingers" and 3 toes,
* Lynels have 5 fingers and no toes
* Koroks have neither fingers nor toes
* Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfoes and Hinoxes have 3 fingers and toes each.
The question is, why did Nintendo make sure to avoid the number four on even the smallest possible scale, but then having 4 Divine Beasts, 4 Champions and 4 main abilities is suddenly not an issue?
Well, that's what you'd get if you plan for five Divine Beasts and then scrap one last minute.
As for Ganon himself, he has 8k HP which get reduced by 2k for every Blight you defeated, until he has 4k left. Call it nitpicky, but that, too, would have felt a bit more "even" if he had 10k HP at the start and ended up losing exactly 1k for every defeated Blight so he had 5k in the end. He's already a super easy boss compared to the regular Blights, so giving him more HP would not have hurt.
By the way, the "Vah Manta" Divine Beast Icon is nothing official. I used parts of the other Divine Beast icons to create it so that it would (hopefully) have the same overall design as the official icons.
